‘Ballet de Lorraine have very dynamic dancers and a varied repertory, and I’m sure they will bring a real energy and excitement to the Linbury’.

Ballet de Lorraine was founded in 1968. In 1999, it became a National Choreographic Centre (one of 19 formed in France in 1984), and has since focused on choreographic creation, experimenting with provocative, contemporary dance. Swedish dancer and choreographer Petter Jacobsson became Director of Ballet de Lorraine in July 2011.

‘I’ve known Petter for many years’, says Kevin. ‘We both danced with the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet from 1984. He was a very fine classical dancer and has led a huge, varied career.’

‘As Director of The Royal Ballet of Sweden, Petter really pushed the boundaries', says Kevin. ‘Now, he continues to do so at Ballet de Lorraine, placing the company at the forefront of dance in France.’

Ballet de Lorraine are performing a mixed bill from 11 to 14 March 2015. The programme features two UK premieres: Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis has created a powerful new work to John Adams' minimalist Shaker Loops (1978); while Israeli choreographer Itamar Serussi has taken Berlioz’s melancholy Symphonie fantastique as inspiration.

A Venn diagram is a useful thing. While it would take half a page of print to explain the – until now – tenuous connection between the dancers Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson (she American, he British), in diagrammatic form it’s the work of a moment. Draw a circle and mark it ‘New York City Ballet’. Draw another labelled ‘The Royal Ballet’. In the lozenge where they intersect, write ‘Christopher Wheeldon’.

The two star dancers have followed distinctly different paths, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and only once, briefly, have their trajectories crossed in a joint performance, and that was a decade ago. But they have a common denominator in the choreographer they both know as Chris, for whom each of these dancers has been a major inspiration. Edward, as many readers will know, was Wheeldon’s first casting choice for jealous king Leontes in his adaptation of The Winter’s Tale. He was also the model for his White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, to mention only the most recent roles. For her part, Wendy retired from New York City Ballet last year after 30 years with the company, the latter half of which saw her feature in almost every piece of work Wheeldon set his hand to in New York. So when someone said ‘you two should do something together’, neither dancer had to think twice about it. For not only did they share a history as Wheeldon muses, but each also wanted something of what the other appeared to offer.

Edward says he has always admired Wendy, ‘not just for how she looks on stage, but for her quietly focused approach to everything. It might be to do with being American, but she has that quality more than most and that’s how I want to be’ Wendy, meanwhile, is ready for a new direction, post-City Ballet. ‘If I see an open window with something interesting on the other side, metaphorically, I’m going to grab it,’ she says. ‘Ed has done a load of dramatic roles and I haven’t, but I have a desire to do that. Somebody once told me “If you want something, find someone who has it and hang around them”. I like to think if I spend enough quality time with Ed, it’ll open that part of me up.’

The spur to their coming together was Edward’s trip to New York with The Metamorphosis, Arthur Pita’s dance-theatre adaptation of the Kafka story in which Edward plays the travelling salesman who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Wendy went along to see the show, loved it and afterwards Ed introduced her to the choreographer. ‘They got on really well so I said “Why don’t we ask Arthur to be the first person to make something for our show?”’

The three met again last August around the time of Wendy’s visit to the Linbury Studio Theatre with her touring programme Restless Creature. This time the meeting with Arthur Pita got down to business in a dance studio. Wendy hadn’t known what to expect, ‘but Ed said “Trust me on this” and I’m glad I did. Just this little play-around session we had, which lasted a few hours, was exactly what I was looking for – a new approach.

‘Arthur’s not a ballet choreographer, but I’m really happy about that. This felt more like being in an improv acting class and it was an answer to a prayer. I don’t know if I'd have been ready for this a few years ago, but now the soil is very fertile.'

Both Wendy and Edward are wary of giving too much away, but Edward is prepared to divulge that Arthur Pita's segment of the programme 'will be a story about two people. In the workshop, we basically just got to know each other again, discovering how each other moved... Arthur is working with the idea of the tango, a formal confrontation between two people, and we're playing around with some music and lyrics that suggest Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. Whether or not that will be the final music, that's the kind of relationship these two people have.'

The evening will ultimately comprise three duets and two solos. A single designer – Jean-Marc Puissant – will give a unified look to the programme ‘and there will be a soundscape that links everything’, according to Ed, although he’s not naming names. Both of the dancers are clear about what they don’t want the evening to be. ‘We’ve seen a lot of those shows where you each do your thing and then everyone claps, and then you have a little pause or a video clip before the next number. There’s nothing wrong with that but we want this to be different. So we’re going for an hour straight through, with one costume to which we can add or subtract things as we go. A lot of modern dance can end up looking a bit similar. I want this to be specifically about us two and where we are now in our dancing lives.’

Physically as well as culturally, Wendy and Ed make an intriguing match. Both are notably long limbed, whippet-lean and hyper-flexible, qualities that choreographers have been happy to exploit over the years. In addition, Wendy, by her own admission, has ‘a crooked back, I have scoliosis. That limits a certain range of motion, but it enhances other shapes I can make well. I have a lot of asymmetry and it’s something not every choreographer understands how to work with. In fact, it hasn’t been a handicap at all, but my doctors are always amazed – they can’t believe that I do what I do. But I’ve dealt with it since I was 12 years old and luckily I had some very good treatment at a young age, so I learned how to support my spine and work with it. The older I get, the more I have to think about it, because it tends to solidify with age. So I have to keep it as malleable and free as possible and I’m on a quest to keep it as juicy as I can.’

As Edward sees it, Wendy is ‘kind of fascinating to look at, but you don’t ever think “her back looks a bit wonky.” You get drawn in. It is truly amazing the ability she has to draw you in and stop time, almost. She still has this magnificence; it’s nothing flashy, more a kind of stillness about her, a focused simplicity.’

All being well, that mature artistry will be magnified to the power of two in their coming collaboration, given Edward’s long experience as a partner as well as a soloist. ‘I think the trust level will be really deep and special because of that, Wendy concludes. ‘We’re both experienced, we’ve both been around the block – we know what we want, we know what’s meaningful to us. And the chemistry is what I really want to show – in lots of different choreographic forms.’

Two Mad Hatters take to the stages of the Royal Opera House this festive season, in works inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. We couldn’t resist bringing together the two different versions of the same character for a dance-off in full costume in front of an audience of 50 excited children from local school St Joseph’s Primary.

The production is staged with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Lily Safra, The Paul Hamlyn Education Fund, The Lord Leonard and Lady Estelle Wolfson Foundation, The Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust and The Royal Opera House Endowment Fund.

Drawing on influences as diverse as Shakespeare and Sondheim, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party sees the Wonderland characters in therapy, enacting a never-ending tea party. The show is suitable for children aged 5 years and above. The production features Turbo (Sky’s ‘Got to Dance’, CBBC’s ‘Turbo Boost’) and Tommy Franzen (Zoo Nation’s Some Like it Hip Hop, Goldberg at the Royal Opera House) as part of the ZooNation Company and is set to a newly-commissioned score.

The Royal Opera House YouTube channel is about to hit 100,000 subscribers and is the most subscribed-to channel of any arts organization in the world. As well as occasional live-streams of performances and events, the channel features regular uploads of behind-the-scenes films and production clips.

For photographs, films, reviews and more information about The Royal Ballet and ZooNation Dance Company, visit www.roh.org.uk/publications and claim your free The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Digital Programme with promo code ‘teaparty’.

In this podcast, Dance Critic and Arts Editor in Chief of The Daily Telegraph, Sarah Crompton, who has seen the Mariinsky Ballet perform many times, talks about the company’s distinctive style and what to look forward to in its Summer Season at the Royal Opera House.

The Mariinsky first appeared at the Royal Opera House as part of a four-week season in 1961, when it was known as the Leningrad State Kirov Ballet. The company’s visit that year was part of a simultaneous exchange of British and Russian ballet companies, with The Royal Ballet appearing both in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) and at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, while the Kirov Ballet dazzled audiences at Covent Garden.

The Bolshoi Ballet had been the first Russian company to visit the West after the end of World War II and had stunned audiences in 1956 with their dramatic and physical intensity. The visit by the Kirov Ballet – the cradle of 19th century classicism – was eagerly anticipated and did not disappoint. They brought a company of over 120 dancers in five different programmes, opening the season with a ballet new to British audiences – The Stone Flower.

Other full-length ballets that season were The Sleeping Beauty, Giselle and Swan Lake, and a gala performance that included Mikhail Fokine’s Chopiniana, first performed at the Mariinsky in 1908; excerpts from Taras Bulba; The Nutcracker; and other works new to the West.

Following the defection of Rudolf Nureyev from the company in Paris in 1961, the Kirov Ballet did not return to Covent Garden until 1966. There was another season in 1988, and then a break until 2000.

Since then, the Mariinsky Ballet has enjoyed a summer season in London nearly every year. Initially the repertory included all the great classical works, several of which had either not been seen in Britain or were less familiar. Increasingly, the company has added works by choreographers familiar to Western audiences, beginning with George Balanchine, who began his career at the Kirov before leaving for Europe in 1924 and then New York where he founded the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet. Works by Kenneth MacMillan and William Forsythe have also been added to their repertory, and this year they are bringing Ashton’s Marguerite and Armand, created on Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev in 1963.

Acclaimed UK dance company HeadSpaceDance return to the Linbury Studio Theatre on 16 April to present a new programme of work entitled If Play is Play….

The programme, directed and curated by Charlotte Broom and Christopher Akrill, is comprised of three self-contained pieces, including a dance-drama collaboration with theatre director, playwright and actor Matthew Dunster.

'Matthew has a very strong sense of movement and, although he’s not a choreographer, he has a passion and a real eye for it', explains Charlotte. 'He has a very different approach to choreography and has brought a real theatricality to the piece, creating it in scenes as if he were visualizing the dance as a play.'

'He told us all to watch a selection of Woody Allen films in which an over-the-shoulder camera follows the actor through a variety of scenes', says Chris. 'This sense of following a character from space to space is something he wants to re-create in the piece.'

'We used a technique common among actors but new to us in dance', adds dancer Clemmie Sveaas. 'He gave us scripted dialogue, and we had to action each line. The words inspired a certain movement from us, such that the whole script became about actions, and we used that to create a duet.'

'We wanted to work with Luca again to bring something from the old into the new', explains Charlotte. 'Luca asks a lot of questions, which creates a very personal piece; the movement he choreographs comes out of the dancers own experiences, beliefs and hopes.'

'We are only in our second day of creation at the moment', says Clemmie. 'We are throwing a medley of ideas into the room and playing with them, exploring what the piece could be. From all of that improvisation, he draws out the best bits, condensing the movement into a structure.’

'When we were rehearsing, Johan would often have the music on repeat and be improvising to it and creating material while we were warming up, as if the music was feeding him', says Chris. 'The more times you heard the piece, hidden nuances - instruments, sounds, rhythms - that you didn't hear the first, second or fifth time, became audible which really inspired the creative process.'

'The Linbury is a very nuturing space and has really encouraged us to develop as a company', says Charlotte, 'and it is great to now have the input, experience and artistic weight of Jonathan and Gemma in the company. We want the company to grow so that we can both extend the relationships we have and create new ones with young dancers and choreographers.'

If Play is Play... runs 16–24 April. Tickets are available. It is a co-production with The Royal Ballet Studio Programme.